Column: Help Yemen’s Forgotten Children

The impact of an 18-month civil war in Yemen is forcing its most vulnerable innocent people into famine and yet Britain continues to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, who are involved in the conflict.

Britain and many other nations standby as 14 million Yemenis are starving to death in this war-torn region.

Pictures are coming out of Yemen every day reminiscent of the famines that massacred millions in Ethiopia , Sudan Biafra and other places.

The children’s hospital in Thawra in Yemen is at breaking point, struggling to save emaciated children, who lie skeletal and listless as food is denied to them, and medics struggle to preserve young lives, because are blockades stopping essential items from getting through.

Millions of children in Yemen are suffering, not only from enforced starvation but from the carnage of war raging around them.

The World Health Programme has been advocating a cessation in the blockades and yet the international communities are not being as proactive as they could or should be in this regard.

I have sisters who worked tirelessly throughout Ethiopia’s enforced famine and conflicts.

They point out regularly that wherever war prevails , it is always the most vulnerable who suffer, especially the children who have no part in the creation of conflict and wars.

In every war and conflict they along with frail elders and people with complex health needs and disabilities are at the mercy of adults who drive forward agendas of annihilation in one form or another.

Such suffering is not sadly confined to the past as today disgraceful numbers of children are dying in Syria, Yemen and other places in our shared world.

As a civilised world, we should not be seeing these atrocities occurring.

Our public authorities can make more concerted representation to our Government, as can we all, to hold them to account.

They need to be forced to review their tepid positions on intervening in Yemen and other areas where children of our world are suffering, in order to curtail the suffering.

Intervention need not be militaristic, it could be simply advocating and putting political pressure on others to allow food and medical supplies to get through to the ordinary people and their children, to those in greatest need.

We also need to stop facilitating the sale of weapons to those who would use them to wound, terrify, maim and kill little children.